Research and Teaching Interests

The social and cultural mediation of body image as well as presentation and risk for eating disorders, social barriers to care for mental disorders, and school-based mental health promotion

Anne E. Becker, MD, PhD, SM  An anthropologist and psychiatrist, Professor Becker’s areas of research focus include the social and cultural mediation of body image as well as presentation and risk for eating disorders, social barriers to care for mental disorders, and school-based mental health promotion.  She has led investigations of the impact of rapid social transition on eating pathology and other youth health risk behaviors in the small-scale indigenous iTaukei population of Fiji and has served as co-PI on school-based mental health interventions in Haiti and Lebanon. Her research on the association of media exposure with eating pathology in Fiji was recognized with the 2013 Price Family Award for Research Excellence from the National Eating Disorders Association and the 2018 Leadership Award in Research from the Academy for Eating Disorders.

Biography

Anne E. Becker, MD, PhD, SM is the Maude and Lillian Presley Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS), where she serves on the MD-PhD Program Leadership Council; she is also founding and past Director of the Eating Disorders Clinical and Research Program at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH).  An anthropologist and psychiatrist, Professor Becker’s areas of research focus include the social and cultural mediation of presentation and risk for eating disorders, social barriers to care for mental disorders, and school-based mental health promotion.  She has led investigations of the impact of rapid social transition on eating pathology and other youth health risk behaviors in the small-scale indigenous iTaukei population of Fiji and has served as co-PI on school-based mental health interventions in Haiti and Lebanon. In addition to the over 150 publications she has authored or co-authored in the scientific literature, Dr. Becker is author of Body, Self, and Society: The View from Fiji (U. Penn Press) and co-editor of a forthcoming book on global mental health training (Routledge). She serves on the editorial boards of Anthropology & Medicine and the Harvard Review of Psychiatry and is former co editor-in-chief of Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry. In addition, Professor Becker is former associate editor of the International Journal of Eating Disorders, past president of the Academy for Eating Disorders, and served as a member of the American Psychiatry Association’s DSM-5 Eating Disorders Work Group. Dr. Becker served as vice chair of the HMS Department of Global Health and Social Medicine from 2009-2016 and is also past director of the HMS MD-PhD Social Sciences program. Her teaching was recognized by the MGH Department of Psychiatry with the “Exceptional Mentorship of Women Faculty” award in 2014. She has also received the inaugural Barbara J. McNeil Faculty Award for Exceptional Institutional Service to HMS in 2014, the 2013 Price Family Award for Research Excellence from the National Eating Disorders Association, and the 2018 Leadership Award in Research from the Academy for Eating Disorders.